~ Images and Impressions

Arsenal Gentleman’s Weekly Review

I am talking of course of the veritable hara-kiri that Woolwich inflicted upon ourselves against Olympic of Athens this Tuesday last. It is an annual part of being an Arsenal fan. Much like the spitting out of one’s cornflakes when the announcement of cash reserves is detailed in the newspapers; St Totteringham’s Day; Vieira Saturday, which always comes some time in early September when a ridiculously avoidable defeat happens because we failed to control the midfield; or the end of August festival of Nostrika, when we are informed that no strikers were available to purchase with clockwork regularity.

This depressingly familiar loss ranks alongside such Arsenalesque classics that we recall with an almost wistful nostalgia such as losing to that team of Greek part timers, PAOK Salonika, whose initials stand for Perhaps Arsenal Ought to Kneel. Last season’s revolver-to-the-temple 3-1 loss to a Monaco side who were so poor they should not only be banned from all of that Principality’s wonderful card rooms but publicly hanged. PSV Eindhoven. The 0-3 reverse to Sciatica Prague. 2-0 away to Duisberg over 50s. 1-0 to Antwerp Ladies. 3-1 at home to Lippstadt Wednesday. I may have made some of those up but you get the point. Truly, we are the Stoke of European football; occasionally something comes off, but on the whole, a poor, dismissible, shabby, apologetic excuse of a team. Unless of course there are points for guineas in the bank. In which case we are world class.

"Every measure which establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives to it an administrative form, creates thereby a class unproductive and idle, living at the expense of the class which is industrious and given to work. Human dignity is bound up with taking responsibility for conducting one's own affairs." ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose — that it may violate property instead of protecting it — then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious. To know this, it is hardly necessary to examine what transpires in the French and English legislatures; merely to understand the issue is to know the answer." ~ Frederic Bastiat

"Howard Roark laughed." ~ Ayn Rand

“Be like the bird that, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.” ~ Victor Hugo

"Now the days they are unwinding like an alarm clock, and the drift it is as steady as it is strong..." ~ Matthew Ryan